My thoughts on Purpose

Since finishing my collegiate eligibility, I quickly found that post-collegiate running is vastly different. You don’t have 15 teammates going on every easy run with you, no one is there to hold you accountable every day, and goals and ambition can only come from you. I’ve never had issues motivating myself to train hard and to get work done, but there is still a different feel outside of a highly structured collegiate system. I quickly had to develop an intrinsic purpose to fuel my endeavors. Purpose, to me, seems to be the way to fuel sustainable success (we can debate what ‘success’ is in a later blog post). With more time to myself in training and in life, I had opportunities to explore my own mind. Certain themes kept popping up, and I’ll share them here:

Community
People in the sport of running have provided purpose for me my entire career. The Minnesota running community on a grand scale has given me opportunity and happiness for more than a decade. Meeting people for runs, the camaraderie of competition, and having people to go through challenges with are part of the reason I love this sport.

Challenge
I think it is important to challenge yourself in something in your life. Learning how to manage ups and downs, pursue something whole-heartedly, and practicing doing hard things are invaluable skills that can translate to many areas of life. (Sport has just happened to be my primary area of challenge in my life, but that certainly will change, and I look forward to whatever may come next.)

Experiencing the world
Running gives me opportunities to see the world on many different levels. On one hand, I get to be in nature nearly every day for at least an hour. I also have had the opportunity to travel around the US for running, giving me some of my favorite life experiences.
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This list grows and changes extremely often, but pondering the things that give you purpose is a great way to lay a healthy foundation for any endeavor. Ask yourself ‘why,’ and just see what comes up!

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